Why Email Marketing Works For Any Business

The most valuable asset of your online business is your "opt-in" list - the list of people who have completed your opt-in form and given you permission to send them email.

Using email to sell products or services online is so easy that literally ANYONE can do it! In fact, getting started with email marketing will probably bring you the easiest profits you've ever been able to generate with your business, and here's why:

• Your "opt-in" email list is made up of people who want to hear from you. They've visited your site, or they've come into your shop, and they've decided that they like what they see enough to give you their email address. They are actually inviting you to sell to them!

• You are giving your customers and subscribers something they've ASKED you for. When someone gives you their email address, they understand that you'll be using it to send them information that they actually want to receive - meaning that your opt-in list will be highly responsive to your email promotions.

• You are developing valuable lifetime relationships with your customers and subscribers. Email allows you to contact the people on your list over and over again, so you can build genuine relationships with them. There's simply NO 47 WAY you could do this offline without spending a fortune on printing and postage!

• Every time you send a mailing, the response is 100% measurable. Unlike other forms of marketing and advertising, email allows you to evaluate the success of your campaigns within just a few hours. This will save you thousands in wasted advertising dollars!

• Opt-in email marketing is effective... instantaneous... and FREE! This is our favorite thing about email marketing: You can contact your customers and subscribers whenever you want, with whatever offer you want, and it never costs you one single dime!

In fact, the use of email as a marketing strategy shows no signs of abating, with spending on email marketing expected to jump from $885 million in 2005 to $1.1 billion by 2010, according to Jupiter Research.

But we've been profiting from email marketing for so long that we sometimes take it for granted! So we want to get you thinking about how YOU can use email to start generating extra cash immediately...

a. How your offline business can use email marketing

If you're wondering how on Earth your offline business can use email marketing - if you don't even have a web site yet - here's a great example: Suppose you own a hair salon and business is slow. You aren't getting many clients, and you are afraid that the coming months are going to be even worse.

If you'd been collecting your clients' names and email addresses (with their permission) when they came up to the cash register to pay for their haircuts, this is all you'd need to do:

1. Spend about 10 minutes writing an email message stating that for this month only, you are offering 20% off all services.

2. Send the message out to your list of clients.

Do you know what will happen within about 12 hours of sending that email? Your phones will start ringing off the hook! What was looking like a slow month will soon be booked solid - and all you had to do was put together a simple email message, which took you 10 minutes to write and cost you NOTHING to send.

Of course, you don' t need to sit down and actually send a separate email to each and every one of your customers. That could literally take you days!

But with computers, you have the power to send out an email promotion to your entire list automatically.

As you collect the names and addresses of your contacts, you just add them to a database. Your email management program will merge the email addresses with your message and sends it out to your whole list at the click of a mouse. It can even personalize each message with the person's first name... or with whatever personal information you want to include!

When you're ready to mail, you just have to write the letter once, and the program will insert the personal details for each person into each email, so it looks like you wrote each one individually.

b. How your online business can use email marketing

If your business already has a web site, you've got a great head start on your competitors who might not have a web presence yet. However, if you aren't combining the power of email marketing with your web site, you're probably generating only a fraction of the profit you could be making.

The real power of email marketing for online businesses is that it gives you a way to drive qualified buyers to your site... whenever you want... at the touch of a button... for FREE!

Think carefully about this concept for just a moment. Imagine having the ability to send a swarm of highly targeted visitors to your site at the exact moment you are featuring a product that you KNOW they'd be interested in purchasing.

This is exactly what email marketing will do for your business! Anyone who comes to your site and gives you their email address - in exchange for a free newsletter subscription or a free report - is a very hot lead. And as you'll see, there's no better tool than email to let you effortlessly follow up with those leads.

And once you've written your emails, the whole process of sending out personalized emails can be completely automated. You don't have to lift a finger. You don't even need to be awake!